How do you stop the coaching carousel?

There are many things in life I don't understand. Why does Fox cancel shows in their prime? Why is Jamaal Tinsley still a Pacer? And why, in the name of all that is holy, does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?

But today I'm intrigued by a different rhetorial question:

Why do pro teams keep hiring the same coaches over and over?

The Seattle (soon-to-be Oklahoma City) Sonics are the latest victim, hiring P.J. Carlesimo from the Spurs to be their new head coach. Carlesimo was pretty medicore as a head coach who in four years never took the Blazers past the first round of the playoffs despite having one of the game's best guards, Clyde Drexler, on the team. His records in three years with the Warriors: 19-63, 21-29 and 6-21 (before being canned in the 1999 season). Hardly the stuff of champions.

But Carlesimo and his legendary lacklustery have found their way to a third head coaching job after five years as an assistant with the Spurs. Which begs a simple question: Why?

Did anything change from his days with Portland or Golden State (other than the fact that Latrell Sprewell is no longer squeezing his windpipe)? Probably not. Maybe he picked up some pointers from Pops in San Antonio, but I doubt it.

Take a look at the last six coaches to win an NBA title:
* Gregg Popovich (never fired as head coach)
* Pat Riley (never fired as head coach)
* Larry Brown (who's been fired a couple of times...but he's the only coach ever to lead a team to an NCAA title and an NBA title)
* Phil Jackson (never fired as head coach)
* Rudy Tomjanovich (never fired as head coach)
* Chuck Daly (fired after 41 games in his first job after he was hired as a mid-season replacement. He then led the Pistons to two NBA titles)

To review: Only one of the last six coaches to win a ring was a journeyman coach with multiple firings - and that was Larry Brown, one of the greatest basketball minds ever. Carlesimo is no Larry Brown. So why are the Sonics expecting similar results?

The NBA surely abides by the Kyoto Protocol with all of the coach-recycling it does. Orlando hired Stan Van Gundy, a veteran coach who couldn't make it in Miami. The Rockets hired Rick Adelman, who has a career playoff record of 70-68. And my Pacers hired Jim O'Brien, despite two uneventful head coaching jobs. Brown and Stan's brother, Jeff (another journeyman coach) are going to be mentioned as potential replacements to any remaining/future coaching jobs.

And that's just dumb. If you're going to take the team in a new direction anyway, why not go with a new guy. Steal an assistant from Phoenix (like the Grizzlies did). Bump up a coach from the college ranks (like the Kings did). Or even hire a former player (like my boy, Mark Jackson). But why hire someone else's mistake?

Each coaching gig is different, so it's impossible to predict how a coach will act with a new group of players (or how the players will react to a new coach). But the best predictor of future performances is past results. And if your past results are 0 NBA titles (O'Brien), being relieved of your coaching duties only to have your boss win a ring for you (Van Gundy) or ticking off players to the point where they choke you (Carlesimo), what does that say about the future?

Einstein supposedly said that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results.

If that's true, then most NBA teams are freakin' nuts.